As I began reading this book in early February, a blizzard dropped several more inches of snow on our already deep drifts. But now, as I write this review three weeks later, the temperature is in the 60s, the snow is almost gone, and the daffodils are tentatively poking above ground.

As a passionate gardener, I am always on the lookout for new gardening strategies. I will turn 70 this year, and want to continue to work in my gardens as long as I am able. Sydney Eddison's timely new book, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (Timber Press, 2010), provides many useful suggestions.

Eddison, who has been gardening for half a century, is an accomplished writer and lecturer and has written six other books on gardening. When Eddison, who is now 84, began to write this book, she wasn't hobbling. That happened later and led to a hip replacement.

She notes that each phase of her life is reflected in her sliding-glass kitchen door. Now she sees the reflection of an "old woman," but when she looks through that door to the garden, the view is very different than when she began to garden there in 1961. Her garden has been an essential part of her life and is full of wonderful memories.

"I cannot leave this place," she writes. "It is where my husband and I spent a lifetime together and where I want to stay." (Her husband died while she was writing this book.)

Eddison traces the history of her secluded but celebrated four-acres-plus garden near Newton, Conn. There was no plan for its development; rather, it was developed according to the limitations of the site, the amount of time that she and her husband, Martin, had available, and their feel for the natural landscape. For the first 30 years, she expanded her garden domain and horizons. She made friends with other gardeners, exchanged plants and gardening advice, joined plant societies, and took gardening courses. By early 2004, she had come to realize that she was no longer a "spring chicken" and would need more help—probably more than she and Martin could afford.

Much of Eddison's garden work takes place in her upper lawn, where a long, curving perennial border follows the site contours. Her first major garden revision, simplifying the perennial borders, was a collaboration with a young, energetic horticultural school graduate. Staging a three-season bloom cycle of perennials is a "tall order and so is maintaining it," she writes.

The greater the variety of perennials in the garden, the more work the border requires—staking, deadheading, cutting back, and division. The couple began to substitute low-maintenance plants, such as bulbs, which "virtually take care of themselves," for the more demanding ones. Eddison also cut back on daylilies, her "all-time favorite" summer-flowering perennial.

Another step toward simplifying that she advocates is substituting some shrubs for perennials. Shrubs, which supply strong structural forms, change more slowly than perennials and are "infinitely less trouble."

Eddison warns those of us who tend to buy perennials on impulse to do more research when we shop for shrubs: Ask other gardeners about their favorites, assess shrub-pruning needs, and be suspicious of size ranges advertised in nursery catalogs. Hydrangeas and viburnums are among the flowering shrubs that flourish for her, and also work well in Kansas.

Over time, Eddison's favorite garden area has become the shady border. (As a hosta fanatic, this is my favorite, too.) There her brunnera, hellebores, and corydalis are "all enthusiastic self-sowers." Among the taller perennials, they behave like a ground cover and discourage weeds. Under a large maple tree, "hostas, ferns, wild ginger, and Solomon's seal have been growing happily for 30 years with practically no care."

She has come to understand and respect the habits of some native plants and has learned about the "miracle of mulch." Now she harvests the leaves in the fall and spreads the shredded leaves over the garden beds the following spring. For large mulching projects, she buys shredded bark mulch by the truckload in the spring and hires an able-bodied young man to put it down. She also makes a master list of seasonal garden tasks, big and small.

Eddison and I are both changing our attitude about lawns. "If it's short and green, it's lawn," she says. We have learned to mow less frequently in the heat of summer and to give up using insecticides. Another gardening strategy that she recommends is container gardening, "which requires a fraction of the physical work that an in-the-ground garden demands." She also is experimenting with bonsai and miniature landscapes in hypertufa troughs.

Sometimes people feel less valued as they grow older, but, as Eddison has often experienced, "One of the lovely things about gardening is that in the eyes of young gardeners, age and experience confer status."

But gardens, like life, are unpredictable:

"I don't know the ending. Gardens don't have endings like novels. And, as gardeners, we don't want them to be finished. ... real life works in ways we cannot anticipate and will never understand. It continues to evolve, leaving gaps, holes, and loose ends as it unfolds. But I do know one thing—I'm not moving if I can help it."

Me, either! Like Eddison, I hope to retain a realistic view of life and gardens and a sense of humor about it all. Gardening makes us better people—or at least it reveals the best that is in us. She suggests that "Making the most of what you have left is also the older gardener's task."

Other suggested readings

• Ruth Stout, How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back (Exposition Press, 1955). This classic but out-of-print book (look for it online) by the "maven of mulch" is one that Eddison highly recommends. Stout gardened organically until her death at 96 in 1980.
• Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden (Norton, 2005). Twice named national poet laureate, Kunitz, who died at age 100 in 2006, describes his garden as a "work of the imagination" and a "constant source of solace and renewal."